"We live in a time of rush. This is reflected high and low. Low: contemporary societies have little or no time for metaphysical pondering. High: even the privileged, academic philosopher is often caught in the hurry, too harried by professional obligations to have enough time or inclination to think. We risk the seduction of what I will call 'thought-bites': positions ready prepared for speed reading, prepackaged for mental digestion. Our quick attention to ideas, more or less familiar, offers a satisfaction but this is short-lived. Little nourished, we seek the stimulus of more quick 'thought-bites' to keep the hunger of spirit at bay."

- William Desmond

Berlioz: "Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."

Alexander the Weightless: "i ets wht i m n wht i m iz mnm"

Aristides the Aristocrat: "Fast food for thoughtlessness--who would have thought it would go down so fast or so soon reduce whole cultures to a tabula rasa? Thinking requires time, but time itself requires Eternity. We now more than ever need ideas that can bite the mind, that can digest mind itself; the only ideas real enough to do so are the Eternal Ideas. We need to learn, as Eliot wrote some decades ago, how to sit still--that the Eternal might come to rest in us, in our restless ever-distracted hearts. Then, and only then, would heart and mind be ready to sustain that which is both timely and timeless; timely because it is Timeless. Learning how to sit still and how late the time is demands of us latecomers that we begin to perceive Eternal Ideas, and perceive the distinction between, say, the mundane "idea" of sitting still and the Eternal Idea of Eternity. Only Eternal Ideas, their reality and living substance, can transcend the speed of time, thereby slowing and eventually stilling both time and the racing mind; while the Idea of Eternity Itself can open mind to the fullness of thoughtfulness and mindfulness. Then, and then only, is individual mind brought to Eternal Mind, individual heart to Eternal Heart. This is Philosophy, the Art of Sitting-Still amongst motion and commotion, while knowing the world of difference it makes."

[Desmond, William. BEYOND HEGEL AND DIALECTIC: SPECULATION, CULT, AND COMEDY. State University of New York Press, 1992.]